I have become keenly aware of time, mostly the lack of it. It’s our most valuable resource, yet we can never gain it back. Middle age has brought about this awareness, yet a continuous threat of cancer has started a timer above my head, like that Nickelback video “If Today was Your Last Day.”
I don’t have many regrets in my life—life is life and what happens, happens. We can’t control too much of it while we’re at the mercy of loved ones and societal norms, like having to work so that we can live. I wish I would have traveled more, especially gone to Europe, but otherwise, my biggest regret is that I am not a published author. Yet.
It’s the yet that is on a timer. I may not have the time to write with mortality at issue.
I bit the side of my cheek a couple of months ago. I now have a lump that won’t heal. Plus, I can’t be sure that biting my cheek caused it—did I bite it because the lump was there? It’s the classic chicken or egg bit. After a brief WebMD search about oral cancer, while it doesn’t look anything like that, I found a horrifying tidbit: excessive sun exposure on the lips can cause cancerous lumps to appear in the mouth. I had to talk myself off a ledge after reading that.
So my husband researched for me and found a mucus bump thingie (there’s a medical term for it, but I don’t know what it is). These are common bumps, most go away on their own, but some do not. No worries. I let it go. But then that same side of my face with the bump started to hurt—jaw pain, ear pain…I couldn’t figure out if it was psychosomatic or real. I figured the best way to stop the worrying was to just go to the doctor. When I took my last personal day for the school year, I made an appointment, but not with my doctor who doesn’t work until Wednesday, so I saw a PA.
I was shocked when she read my file. She knew all about my melanoma. She said, “I’m 90 percent sure it’s scar tissue, but because of your melanoma, I’m going to call an oral surgeon.”
I have an appointment with the oral surgeon in two days. Until then, I feel like I have a death sentence. I’ve already decided I’m not going to have them chop off my face nor will I do chemotherapy. I’ll just make the best of my time left. But I’ll never get written all that I want to write.
I know I’m jumping the proverbial gun. For all I know, the oral surgeon will take one look at my mouth and say everything is fine, although I’m dreading the appointment for so many reasons. I hate the dentist and never go, so that alone will bring out my panic. And then if he does an actual procedure to get rid of the lump—I can’t think about it too much at all. But that’s not even the bigger issue.
The issue is, even if it’s nothing, what will I do the next time and the next time and the next time I have a bump or a blemish or a pain or some other vague symptom? I can’t put myself through this every time, and now that I’ve reached the crux of middle age, more than likely I will have more minor—or major—health problems, as that is what happens when we age.
I spent most of yesterday afternoon panicking, yet a productive panic, as I crossed off projects on my summer to-do list even though it’s not even summer yet. But while I was making those music video labels for DVDs that no one gives a shit about but me, I couldn’t help but think it was a waste of time. Is this what I want to be doing if I have only months left to live? These will just get tossed when I’m dead, so why am I doing it?
When my mom was dying of lung cancer, I asked her if it was better to know you were dying. Without hesitation, she said, “No.” Yet I wasn’t so sure, even at 32 years old. Now 15 years later, I’m still not.
In junior high, I watched ‘night Mother, a movie with Sissy Spacek and Anne Bancroft. Nothing happens in the movie, yet it was oddly captivating. Sissy is the adult daughter of Anne, who is explaining to her mother all sorts of things, like how to do this or that or when to give the wrapped presents she put in the closet. We don’t realize until halfway through the movie that Sissy plans to kill herself. At the end, she locks herself in her bedroom and we hear a gunshot.
I have no idea why such a movie appealed to me. I had no suicide ideations as a teenager, yet the organization of it all appealed to me. You can plan for your death, map out all that should occur in your absence, tidy up your belongings, and then exit the world. This was a movie I watched multiple times, not so many that I could recite the dialogue like Dirty Dancing, but one that wasn’t just a one-and-done. Real life movies drew me to them, and ‘night Mother felt real, like Country or The River or Places in the Heart (although my favorite Eighties’ movie was The Lost Boys—go figure).
In those last few months when my mom was still able to get out of bed, I labeled all the stuff in her curio cabinet. It was important to her that we knew who those items belonged to. But that was the end of it. She vehemently shook her head no when I asked her if she wanted to go through any closets or totes. She did plan her funeral, which was awkward for me as she shared her plans and showed me pictures of caskets and flower arrangements like a Bridezilla would have.
I wonder if we’d live our lives differently if we were told when we would die. No premonitions or dreams, but actually knew the year of our death. Would we continue to waste all our time on social media? Or stay stuck at dead end jobs? Or remain in relationships we should have abandoned years ago? Would we be happier? Would we accept differences in people and have less conflict and wars and political strife? Would I have done anything differently if I knew when I would die?
Some writers are more popular after death, like Sylvia Plath or Emily Dickinson. Their poems have immortalized them. Other writers become archetypes, like Edgar Allan Poe, reduced to one-dimensional authors despite the vastness of their genius. Others we associate with one piece of work, no matter how large their catalog, like Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. And some we even debate their authorship, like Shakespeare or Capote’s In Cold Blood.
I take solace in Sylvia Plath’s journal, as she constantly writes about needing to write but not doing it. She even recognizes how she uses excuses to avoid writing, yet all she desires to do is write. Plath didn’t know her days were numbered even though her life was cut short by her own hand. JFK lived recklessly, having a foreboding that he wouldn’t live to old age.
How do we grapple with our mortality as we dawdle our time away? Those of us that carry with us resentment and anger and jealousy and spite—don’t we know that it’s a waste of precious time and energy? Why do we drive without seatbelts, smoke despite the warnings, overeat, or lay out in the sun every summer afternoon? We can’t live in a plastic bubble, but surely we know the dangers, don’t we? My students laugh when I show them a picture of Elizabeth I, and how the white makeup on her face could very well have contributed to her death. Every day, articles pop up on my computer about how much plastic we’re ingesting, how the chemicals in cosmetics or cleaning supplies may kill us, how the hormones pumped into the food we eat may explain puberty’s early onset.
Maybe we’ve all accepted that we die a little bit each day. We just don’t know how many days we have left. And most of us don’t seem to care.